Code Red

How Navajo `Windtalkers' Stumped The Japanese And Helped Win The War

June 12, 2002|By GREG MORAGO; COURANT STAFF WRITER

Don't be fooled by the ads for director John Woo's new World War II movie, ``Windtalkers.'' The star of the movie isn't Nicolas Cage or Christian Slater. Or the multi-million-dollar special effects employed for dramatic battle scenes. Or even the flag-waving, feel-good patriotism so coveted by post-9/11 American moviegoers.

No, the star of ``Windtalkers,'' which opens Friday, is an ancient language -- gorgeously complex, maddeningly impenetrable to non-native speakers -- without which America might not have won the war.

It's Navajo.

The language of the Navajo Indians was used during World War II by a select group of top-secret communications specialists, called ``code talkers,'' to transmit battlefield communications. The code talkers, all young Navajo men fluent in both their native language and English, participated in every Pacific battle fought by the Marines, from Guadalcanal in 1942 to Okinawa in 1945.

Their code -- the Navajo language, which until then was largely unwritten -- was never unlocked by the Japanese. Navajo code talkers, whose heroism is the subject of ``Windtalkers,'' were later acknowledged as integral to U.S. victories in the Pacific.

While the members of the Navajo Nation are eager to see their story on the big screen, the very language of the code talkers is threatened on the Navajo reservation.

``Yes, we fear its loss. The handwriting is on the wall,'' said Wayne Holm, education specialist in the culture and language department of the Navajo Nation, a 25,000-square-mile reservation located within Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.

``There is no native language in America anymore that is not threatened,'' he said. ``Once you no longer have child speakers, then the language is on the way out. Our portion of child speakers is decreasing dramatically, right in front of our eyes.''

Up until about 30 years ago, nearly all Navajo children entering kindergarten spoke Navajo, Holm said. Studies done in 1992 and '93 determined that roughly half the children entering school understood their native language. Holm said that number is even smaller today.

The Navajo Nation has about 225,000 members and is the largest federally recognized Indian tribe in the United States. According to Theodore B. Fernald, an associate professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College, the tribe has about 100,000 Navajo speakers today.

While Fernald calls those numbers ``good,'' he believes the language is in danger of being lost. ``It's certainly threatened, even though there are many speakers around,'' said Fernald, who teaches classes on the use of cryptography and the Navajo Code, as well as Navajo linguistics. ``If it keeps going this way, it won't be around for more than a couple more generations.''

While the tribe has education policies in place that require Navajo language education in all schools throughout the reservation, there is mixed success in Navajo education, Holm said. That's because the tribe sits in three states with 20 separate school districts. While most Navajo children attend public schools, others attend Bureau of Indian Affairs schools, grant or ``contract'' schools and Christian mission schools. All of which makes a standardized Navajo education curriculum virtually impossible.

Navajo children, however, are familiar with the history of their code talkers. But this is only a recent phenomenon, because the original code talkers returned home from World War II unable to talk about their achievements -- bound by their oath of secrecy required by the code.

``For quite a long period of time, this was something that was not talked about. Our understanding is that they shouldn't speak about it,'' Holm said.

``It's only in the past 15 years that it's been out in the open. Now it's fairly widely known and it's something people take a great deal of pride in.''

The recognition of the code talkers -- evidenced by ``Windtalkers'' and congressional recognition two years ago -- was a long time coming.

A bill, championed by U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., was signed into law in December 2000, authorizing the president to award Congressional Gold Medals to the original 29 Navajo code talkers, as well as silver medals to each man who later qualified as a code talker.

``At the end of the war, these unsung heroes returned to their homes on buses -- no parades, no fanfare, no special recognition for what they truly accomplished,'' Bingaman wrote.

``Although the war was over, their duty -- their oath of secrecy -- continued. For the next 23 years, the Department of Defense maintained the code's sensitive classification, further obscuring the code talkers' achievements. Even today, more than 50 years later, many of these aging veterans talk only hesitantly about the past.''

Last July, five of the surviving members of the original code talkers were presented with Congressional Gold Medals, the nation's highest civilian honor, in a ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda. President Bush called them ``unsung American heroes.''